August 26th, 2013 by Bill Valle

VMware vSphere 5.5 Announced

VMware is announcing VMware vSphere v5.5 with Operations Management which can now scale twice as large as the previous version for levels of CPUs, Memory, and NUMA nodes. It also now supports up to 64TB virtual disk files. A new level of customization also enables tuning to improve the performance of low latency applications such as in-memory databases. Also new is vSphere, Flash Read Cache allows the virtualization of server side flash which will significantly lower the latency to the read cache layer. The new release also features high availability functionality.

To support a higher level of availability for business critical applications, vSphere App HA detects either application or operating system failures and recovers from them. This functionality supports the most common applications in the market and is also can be accessed via its APIs. The new vSphere Big Data Extensions can run Apache Hadoop workloads and support multiple Hadoop distributions for higher utilization, reliability, and agility – allowing administrators to manage this all from one common platform.

An enhanced VMware vSphere Replication now delivers multiple point-in-time snapshots for increased granularity in recovery and for scalability allows multiple appliances per vCenter Server. It is also supported for use with vSphere Storage Motion and Storage DRS. Also enhanced is vSphere Data Protection, which can now restore to a host independent of VMware vCenter Server, and it also allows customers to backup and restore individual vmdk files.

Pricing and Availability

Expected to be available in Q3 2013, VMware vSphere with Operations Management 5.5 will be offered in 3 editions: Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. Pricing starts at $1,745 per processor.